Photo from venus.com

I’m naturally shy.

I know because, though I’m 5’7″ I would still hind behind my mother’s leg confronted with strangers.

As Jon Acuff says, ‘having to be extroverted makes me want to throw up in my sleeve a little bit.”

I was on a little Embraer flight to Houston and wearing my pink and white maxi dress from venus.com. While fixing my seat and letting the next passengers board, I made myself smile big at a little 3-4 year old girl who looked like the cuter, princess version of Dora the Explorer. I pretended to be Julia Roberts while I said “hello” fakin’ it till I made it.

The payoff was huge.

As she passed she said “I love your dress”.

“Thank you!” I gushed. “I like your shirt-very pretty!”

Practicing on kids is a gold mine.

It helps me in situations like meeting the last man on the moon, New York Times Best-selling authors and big wigs at Purdue.

Tomorrow we leave for Indiana to give our inagural scholarship at Purdue to the first student.

The recipient is a young man so I’ll have to do better than “what a pretty shirt!”

or maybe he’ll like that.

I’ll report back.